I made a simple salad of watercress and avocado—with a dressing of sweet white miso, olive oil, champagne vinegar, salt and pepper—and served it with rosemary roasted yukon gold potatoes. A righteous lunch (er, breakfast) to ring in 2012.

Roasted eggplant and tomato ragù with penne and turkey meatballs—the antidote to a rainy weekend.

As far as I’m concerned, it is never too early in the day for homemade cream of roasted tomato soup and molten cheese.

The week concluded with an autumnal chill that stirred our appetites for bracing New York fare (with a few twists). Hot dogs, cloaked with the likes of homemade cheese product, onion marmalade, sriracha mayo, fried shallots. Doughnuts, yeast and cake, plunged into brown butter maple glaze, blueberry chai glaze, toasted pecans and bacon. Coffee, cold brewed and marbled with cream in mason jars. And an old movie about crime.